I think that is a problem with most Judo classes Leo, the lines between light Randori and full on randori get blurred very easily.

Regarding someone in your Judo class getting busted up every week, welcome to Judo!!! That is a pretty common occurence in every class I've been to.

Along with boxing, no martial art (and I include MMA in this) takes more out of a person than Judo IMO (although Wrestling looks nearly as bad, I haven't wrestled).

The way I see it, you have some options:

i) Look for people who go light in Randori, and only ever spar with them.

ii) Do limited randori. Maybe only do one or two sessions, then sit the rest out.

iii) I know you might not want to hop out of Judo so soon, but consider BJJ. As I said before, BJJ is about 10 times safer than Judo. A guy on sherdog said he met a Brazilian BJJ instructor who also did a bit of Judo. The guy from Sherdog also did a bit of Judo. The Brazilian coach explained BJJ thusly "BJJ is like Judo except you don't get injured all the time!" If you want to keep doing Judo, maybe cut down to one class a week, and do BJJ instead of your other Judo classes. Or just drop Judo altogether.

I realise I may get a certain amount of flak for suggesting opting out of Judo so soon, but you have to take care of your health first and foremost Leo. If you aren't trying to get to the Olympics or don't have a burning desire to do Judo and the randori situation doesn't improve, it may be better to try BJJ for a while.

Exactly Dobbersky. Only people who persisted with Judo are usually people who are passionate about it or people who want to compete at the highest level. I heard of a guy from Edinburgh (originally from NI) who fought at a high level in tournaments for a long time. He sustanined a lot of joint damaged which directly lead to an arthritic condition. He had arthritis from the age of 38 and was forced to quit Judo.

Martial arts should enhance persons life IMO, not take away from it. It gets to a point where you have to face the reality of training.

Hope you get well soon Leo, and as before, consider BJJ when you are well if you still want to grapple but reduce injury risk.

Goodness Leo, take it easy with that. If you are going back to Judo I would defintely talk to your coach and take a more selective approach to randori. As I said before, do somewhere between little to no randori depending on how you feel. And make sure where possible you avoid any knuckle heads in class.

Or ask your coach if you can do ground randori only for a while. Just work on sparring on the ground. The less chance you have of getting thrown, the less chance you have of getting injured IMO. Most injuries in Judo I've seen occur by a)someone getting thrown b) someone trying to throw their opponent.

I'm probably going to opt out of randori most of the time now. It's a shame because I would like to be able to practice against a resisting opponent but it's just a bit too risky. I think I'll move to the intermediate Danzan Ryu Jujitsu class where they don't do randori and maybe I'll transition to BJJ when I've had enough of learning throws.

P.S. Apparently the spur has been there for years, it's not a result of my Judo training but it didn't help the injury. I must have developed it during my TKD years.

I'm telling you something you already know Leo, but learning throws against non-resistant opponents will only be of limited benefit to you in the long run. And a lot of Judo throws (regardless of where you learn them) still might work your shoulder pretty hard, which could make life difficult for you because of the spur.

Give it a go though. I should also say that if you do want to continue with throws, a good BJJ school will teach you throws and other takedowns too, but you have options of NOT having to throw someone in BJJ sparring. In modern Judo, you are more or less expected to throw someone (or get thrown). You have far more options in BJJ. You can simply pull guard on someone in BJJ sparring from standing, and you both go down in pretty safe and pain free manner.

I'm definitely going to look for a good BJJ class sometime in future but I really enjoy doing throws, so I'll probably at least continue to practice them if I can. I know that it's not as good to train against a non-resisting opponent but in this case I may not have a choice. We'll see what happens, but I'm not going to risk major shoulder injury. If there's pain during static throws, I may have to stop altogether.